Performance

There are few oportunities to hear Old Norse poetry being performed, in spite of the fact that it belongs to an oral tradition. This is partly because we have little information about the way the poetry was performed and received, other than a few brief references to the recitation of poetry in the surviving literature. It is hard to imagine that instrumental accompaniment did not play some role in the performance of Eddic poetry, and we have some information about Viking Age instruments to go on, even if there is no record of the music played. On this page, we present several modern performances of Eddic poetry and some of the leading practitioners of reconstructed medieval performance. 

Performance of extract from Atlakviða by Hanna Marti and Benjamin Bagby of Sequentia

Press Photo of Members of Sequentia

(c) Sequentia

Sequentia


Sequentia is an ensemble "dedicated to the performance and recording of Western European music from the period before 1300" and led by musician Benjamin Bagby. In addition to the reconstruction in performance of Old English poems (such as Beowulf) and poems from the Latin and German traditions, the ensemble has also performed Old Norse poetry, including from the Poetic Edda. The recording below was made during the 'Old Norse Poetry in Performance' conference in Oxford in 2016, and is reproduced with the kind permission of the performers Hanna Marti and Benjamin Bagby. It is an extract of the Eddic poem Atlakviða (sts. 15, 16 and 18). You can visit their website here.

Moirai Ensemble (website)

Screenshot of Moirai Ensemble Website

(c) Hanna Marti

Moirai Ensemble


Another group with close links to Sequentia is the Moirai Ensemble, which was founded in Reykjavik in 2015 by Hanna Marti and Mara Winter, and which specializes in the music of the Early and High Middle Ages,focusing in particular on the female figures in the Edda songs. There are very few female voices represented in modern performance of Old Norse poetry, despite the number of Eddic poems presented by a female speaker (most notably Guðrun and Brynhild in the Sigurd Cycle). Moirai is working to redress this, and to represent the strong and powerful women of the Edda. You can listen to clips of Eddic poetry on their website here. The following video of Hanna Marti performing the opening to the Eddic poem Vǫluspá was also recorded at the 'Old Norse Poetry in Performance' conference in Oxford, 2016.

Performance of 'Völuspá' by Einar Selvik (Opening Lines)

Performance by Einar Selvik at ONPIP

(c) Einar Selvik. Video TBirkett. Reproduced with permission

Einar Selvik and Reconstructed Music


Whilst taking different approaches to the performance of Old Norse poetry, what the three examples on this page have in common is the use of reconstructed instruments and musical accompaniment. In the clip below, Einar Selvik, a self-taught singer and multi-instrumentalist, plays a lyre based on an instrument found in Kravik, Numedal in Norway dating to the 13th century. The lyrics are extracts of skaldic poetry from Ragnars saga loðbrókar ok sona hans. For more information about the Wardruna project, see here.